Microsoft Translator widget dynamically translates webpages

One of the announcements we missed from the first day of MIX09 was a new release from the Microsoft Translator team, the same group that is responsible for Live Search Translator as well as the Translate with Windows Live accelerator in IE8. The Microsoft Translator webpage widget is available as a technology preview to MIX09 attendees as well as anyone else who can get their hands on an invite code. Currently the best way to get one is to register and cross your fingers.

The free, customizable (color and size), widget is built on top of the Microsoft Translator AJAX API (also announced at MIX09) and can be placed on your webpage (requires that you put a small snippet of code into your source) so that your readers can instantly switch languages on the page. Hovering over the translation shows the original text. The advantage here is that it is easy to use and doesn't take the user away from the site. Currently, there are 12 languages supported: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified & Traditional), Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

Since this is a technology preview, the team is still working on polishing the UI, making the widget more customizable, as well as adding new features including "Automatic" translations on page load, multiple layouts/views, and so on. The invite codes are really the major barrier right now, but we'll keep you posted.